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Editors like the integration of Adobe’s software, especially Dynamic Link and Direct Link between creative applications. This sort of approach is applied to collaborative workflows with Adobe Anywhere, which permits multiple stakeholders, including editors, producers and directors, to access common media and productions from multiple, remote locations. One company that has invested in the Adobe Anywhere environment is G-Men Media of Venice, California, who installed it as their post production hub. By using Adobe Anywhere, Jeff Way (COO) and Clay Glendenning (CEO) sought to improve the efficiency of the filmmaking process for their productions. No science project – they have now tested the concept in the real world on several indie feature films.

Their latest film, Divine Access, produced by The Traveling Picture Show Company in association with G-Men Media, is a religious satire centering on reluctant prophet Jack Harriman. Forces both natural and supernatural lead Harriman down a road to redemption culminating in a final showdown with his long time foe, Reverend Guy Roy Davis. Steven Chester Prince (Boyhood, The Ringer, A Scanner Darkly) moves behind the camera as the film’s director. The entire film was shot in Austin, Texas during May of 2014, but the processing of dailies and all post production was handled back at the Venice facility. Way explains, “During principal photography we were able to utilize our Anywhere system to turn around dailies and rough cuts within hours after shooting. This reduced our turnaround time for review and approval, thus reducing budget line items. Using Anywhere enabled us to identify cuts and mark them as viable the same day, reducing the need for expensive pickup shoots later down the line.”

The production workflow

Director of Photography Julie Kirkwood (Hello I Must Be Going, Collaborator, Trek Nation) picked the ARRI ALEXA for this film and scenes were recorded as ProRes 4444 in 2K. An on-set data wrangler would back up the media to local hard drives and then a runner would take the media to a downtown upload site. The production company found an Austin location with 1GB upload speeds. This enabled them to upload 200GB of data in about 45 minutes. Most days only 50-80GB were uploaded at one time, since uploads happened several times throughout each day.

Way says, “We implemented a technical pipeline for the film that allowed us to remain flexible. Adobe’s open API platform made this possible. During production we used an Amazon S3 instance in conjunction with Aspera to get the footage securely to our system and also act as a cloud back-up.” By uploading to Amazon and then downloading the media into their Anywhere system in Venice, G-Men now had secure, full-resolution media in redundant locations. Camera LUTs were also sent with the camera files, which could be added to the media for editorial purposes in Venice. Amazon will also provide a long-term archive of the 8TB of raw media for additional protection and redundancy. This Anywhere/Amazon/Aspera pipeline was supervised by software developer Matt Smith.

Back in Venice, the download and ingest into the Anywhere server and storage was an automated process that Smith programmed. Glendenning explains, “It would automatically populate a bin named for that day with the incoming assets. Wells [Phinny, G-Men editorial assistant] would be able to grab from subfolders named ‘video’ and ‘audio’ to quickly organize clips into scene subfolders within the Anywhere production that he would create from that day’s callsheet. Wells did most of this work remotely from his home office a few miles away from the G-Men headquarters.” Footage was synced and logged for on-set review of dailies and on-set cuts the next day. Phinny effectively functioned as a remote DIT in a unique way.

Remote access in Austin to the Adobe Anywhere production for review was made possible through an iPad application. Way explains, “We had close contact with Wells via text message, phone and e-mail. The iPad access to Anywhere used a secure VPN connection over the Internet. We found that a 4G wireless data connection was sufficient to play the clips and cuts. On scenes where the director had concerns that there might not be enough coverage, the process enabled us to quickly see something. No time was lost to transcoding media or to exporting a viewable copy, which would be typical of the more traditional way of working.”

Creative editorial mixing Adobe Anywhere and Avid Media Composer

Once principal photography was completed, editing moved into the G-Men mothership. Instead of editing with Premiere Pro, however, Avid Media Composer was used. According to Way, “Our goal was to utilize the Anywhere system throughout as much of the production as possible. Although it would have been nice to use Premiere Pro for the creative edit, we believed going with an editor that shared our director’s creative vision was the best for the film. Kindra Marra [Scenic Route, Sassy Pants, Hick] preferred to cut in Media Composer. This gave us the opportunity to test how the system could adapt already existing Adobe productions.” G-Men has handled post on other productions where the editor worked remotely with an Anywhere production. In this case, since Marra lived close-by in Santa Monica, it was simpler just to set up the cutting room at their Venice facility. At the start of this phase, assistant editor Justin (J.T.) Billings joined the team.

Avid has added subscription pricing, so G-Men installed the Divine Access cutting room using a Mac Pro and “renting” the Media Composer 8 software for a few months. The Anywhere servers are integrated with a Facilis Technology TerraBlock shared storage network, which is compatible with most editing applications, including both Premiere Pro and Media Composer. The Mac Pro tower was wired into the TerraBlock SAN and was able to see the same ALEXA ProRes media as Anywhere. According to Billings, “Once all the media was on the TerraBlock drives, Marra was able to access these in the Media Composer project using Avid’s AMA-linking. This worked well and meant that no media had to be duplicated. The film was cut solely with AMA-linked media. External drives were also connected to the workstations for nightly back-ups as another layer of protection.”

Adobe Anywhere at the finish line

Once the cut was locked, an AAF composition for the edited sequence was sent from Media Composer to DaVinci Resolve 11, which was installed on an HP workstation at G-Men. This unit was also connected to the TerraBlock storage, so media instantly linked when the AAF file was imported. Freelance colorist Mark Todd Osborne graded the film on Resolve 11 and then exported a new AAF file corresponding to the rendered media, which now also existed on the SAN drives. This AAF composition was then re-imported into Media Composer.

Billings continues, “All of the original audio elements existed in the Media Composer project and there was no reason to bring them into Premiere Pro. By importing Resolve’s AAF back into Media Composer, we could then double-check the final timeline with audio and color corrected picture. From here, the audio and OMF files were exported for Pro Tools [sound editorial and the mix is being done out-of-house]. Reference video of the film for the mix could now use the graded images. A new AAF file for the graded timeline was also exported from Media Composer, which then went back into Premiere Pro and the Anywhere production. Once we get the mixed tracks back, these will be added to the Premiere Pro timeline. Final visual effects shots can also be loaded into Anywhere and then inserted into the Premiere Pro sequence. From here on, all further versions of Divine Access will be exported from Premiere Pro and Anywhere.”

Glendenning points out that, “To make sure the process went smoothly, we did have a veteran post production supervisor – Hank Braxtan – double check our workflow. He and I have done a lot of work together over the years and has more than a decade of experience overseeing an Avid house. We made sure he was available whenever there were Avid-related technical questions from the editors.”

Way says, “Previously, on post production of [the indie film] Savageland, we were able to utilize Anywhere for full post production through to delivery. Divine Access has allowed us to take advantage of our system on both sides of the creative edit including principal photography and post finishing through to delivery. This gives us capabilities through entire productions. We have a strong mix of Apple and PC hardware and now we’ve proven that our Anywhere implementation is adaptable to a variety of different hardware and software configurations. Now it becomes a non-issue whether it’s Adobe, Avid or Resolve. It’s whatever the creative needs dictate; plus, we are happy to be able to use the fastest machines.”

Glendenning concludes, “Tight budget projects have tight deadlines and some producers have missed their deadlines because of post. We installed Adobe Anywhere and set up the ecosystem surrounding it because we feel this is a better way that can save time and money. I believe the strategy employed for Divine Access has been a great improvement over the usual methods. Using Adobe Anywhere really let us hit it out of the park.”

As we head toward the end of the year, it’s time to look again at a few items you can use to spruce up your edit bay.

Let’s start at the computer. The “tube” Mac Pro has been out for nearly a year, but many will still be trying to get the most life out of their existing Mac Pro “tower”. I wrote about this awhile back, so this is a bit of a recap. More RAM, an internal SSD and an upgraded GPU card are the best starting points. OWC and Crucial are your best choices for RAM and solid state drives. If you want to bump up your GPU, then the Sapphire 7950 (Note: I have run into issues with some of these cards, where the spacer screws are too tall, requiring you to install the card in slot 2) and/or Nvidia GTX 680 Mac Edition cards are popular choices. However, these will only give you an incremental boost if you’ve already been running an ATI 5870 or Nvidia Quadro 4000 display card. If you have the dough and want some solid horsepower, then go for the Nvidia Quadro K5000 card for the Mac. To expand your audio monitoring, look at Mackie mixers, KRK speakers and the PreSonus Audiobox USB interface. Naturally there are many video monitor options, but assuming you have an AJA or Blackmagic Design interface, FSI would be my choice. HP Dreamcolor is also a good option when connecting directly to the computer.

The video plug-in market is prolific, with plenty of packages and/or individual filters from FxFactory, Boris, GenArts, FCP Effects, Crumplepop, Red Giant and others. I like the Universe package from Red Giant, because it supports FCP X, Motion, Premiere Pro and After Effects. Red Giant continues to expand the package, including some very nice new premium effects. If you are a Media Composer user, then you might want to look into the upgrade from Avid FX to Boris Red. Naturally, you can’t go wrong with FxFactory, especially if you use FCP X. There’s a wide range of options with the ability to purchase single filters – all centrally managed through the FxFactory application.

In the color correction world, there’s been a lot of development in film emulation look-up tables (LUTs). These can be used in most NLEs and grading applications. If that’s for you, check out ImpulZ and Osiris from Color Grading Central (LUT Utility required with FCP X), Koji Color or the new SpeedLooks 4 (from LookLabs). Each package offers a selection of Fuji and Kodak emulations, as well as other stylized looks. These packages feature LUT files in the .cube and/or .look (Adobe) LUT file formats and, thus, are compatible with most applications. If you want film emulation that also includes 3-way grading tools and adjustable film grain, your best choice is FilmConvert 2.0.

Another category that is expanding covers the range of tools used to prep media from the camera prior to the edit. This had been something only for DITs and on-set “data wranglers”, but many videographers are increasingly using such tools on everyday productions. These now offer on-set features that benefit all file-based recordings. Pomfort Silverstack, ShotPut Pro, Redcine-X Pro and Adobe Prelude have been joined by new tools. To start, there’s Offload and EditReady, which are two very specific tools. Offload simply copies and verifies camera-card media to two target drives. EditReady is a simple drag-and-drop batch convertor to transcode media files. These join QtChange (a utility to batch-add timecode and reel IDs to media files) and Better Rename (a Finder renaming utility) in my book, as the best single-purpose production applications.

If you want more in one tool, then there’s Bulletproof, which has now been joined in the market by Sony Creative Software’s Catalyst Browse and Prepare. Bulletproof features media offload, organization, color correction and transcoding. I like it, but my only beef is that it doesn’t properly handle timecode data, when present. Catalyst Browse is free and similar to Canon’s camera utility. It’s designed to read and work with media from any Sony camera. Catalyst Prepare is the paid version with an expanded feature set. It supports media from other camera manufacturers, including Canon and GoPro.

Finally, many folks are looking for alternative to Adobe Photoshop. I’m a fan of Pixelmator, but this has been joined by Pixlr and Mischief. All three are available from the Mac App Store. Pixlr is free, but can be expanded through subscription. In its basic form, Pixlr is a stylizing application that is like a very, very “lite” version of Photoshop; however, it includes some very nice image processing filters. Mischief is a drawing application designed to work with drawing tablets, although a mouse will work, too.

David Fincher is back with another dark tale of modern life,Gone Girl – the film adaptation of Gillian Flynn’s 2012 novel. Flynn also penned the screenplay. It is the story of Nick and Amy Dunne (Ben Affleck and Rosamund Pike) – writers who have been hit by the latest downturn in the economy and are living in America’s heartland. Except that Amy is now mysteriously missing under suspicious circumstances. The story is told from each of their subjective points of view. Nick’s angle is revealed through present events, while Amy’s story is told through her diary in a series of flashbacks. Through these we learn that theirs is less than the ideal marriage we see from the outside. But whose story tells the truth?

To pull the film together, Fincher turned to his trusted team of professionals including director of photography Jeff Cronenweth, editor Kirk Baxter and post production supervisor Peter Mavromates. Like Fincher’s previous films, Gone Girl has blazed new digital workflows and pushed new boundaries. It is the first major feature to use the RED EPIC Dragon camera, racking up 500 hours of raw footage. That’s the equivalent of 2,000,000 feet of 35mm film. Much of the post, including many of the visual effects, were handled in-house.

Kirk Baxter co-edited David Fincher’s The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, The Social Network and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo with Angus Wall – films that earned the duo two best editing Oscars. Gone Girl was a solo effort for Baxter, who had also cut the first two episodes of House of Cards for Fincher. This film now becomes the first major feature to have been edited using Adobe Premiere Pro CC. Industry insiders consider this Adobe’s Cold Mountain moment. That refers to when Walter Murch used an early version of Apple Final Cut Pro to edit the film Cold Mountain, instantly raising the application’s awareness among the editing community as a viable tool for long-form post production. Now it’s Adobe’s turn.

In my conversation with Kirk Baxter, he revealed, “In between features, I edit commercials, like many other film editors. I had been cutting with Premiere Pro for about ten months before David invited me to edit Gone Girl. The production company made the decision to use Premiere Pro, because of its integration with After Effects, which was used extensively on the previous films. The Adobe suite works well for their goal to bring as much of the post in-house as possible. So, I was very comfortable with Premiere Pro when we started this film.”

It all starts with dailies

Tyler Nelson, assistant editor, explained the workflow, “The RED EPIC Dragon cameras shot 6K frames (6144 x 3072), but the shots were all framed for a 5K center extraction (5120 x 2133). This overshoot allowed reframing and stabilization. The .r3d files from the camera cards were ingested into a FotoKem nextLAB unit, which was used to transcode edit media, viewing dailies, archive the media to LTO data tape and transfer to shuttle drives. For offline editing, we created down-sampled ProRes 422 (LT) QuickTime media, sized at 2304 x 1152, which corresponded to the full 6K frame. The Premiere Pro sequences were set to 1920 x 800 for a 2.40:1 aspect. This size corresponded to the same 5K center extraction within the 6K camera files. By editing with the larger ProRes files inside of this timeline space, Kirk was only viewing the center extraction, but had the same relative overshoot area to enable easy repositioning in all four directions. In addition, we also uploaded dailies to the PIX system for everyone to review footage while on location. PIX also lets you include metadata for each shot, including lens choice and camera settings, such as color temperature and exposure index.”

Kirk Baxter has a very specific way that he likes to tackle dailies. He said, “I typically start in reverse order. David tends to hone in on the performance with each successive take until he feels he’s got it. He’s not like other directors that may ask for completely different deliveries from the actors with each take. With David, the last take might not be the best, but it’s the best starting point from which to judge the other takes. Once I go through a master shot, I’ll cut it up at the points where I feel the edits will be made. Then I’ll have the assistants repeat these edit points on all takes and string out the line readings back-to-back, so that the auditioning process is more accurate. David is very gifted at blocking and staging, so it’s rare that you don’t use an angle that was shot for a scene. I’ll then go through this sequence and lift my selected takes for each line reading up to a higher track on the timeline. My assistants take the selects and assemble a sequence of all the angles in scene order. Once it’s hyper-organized, I’ll send it to David via PIX and get his feedback. After that, I’ll cut the scene. David stays in close contact with me as he’s shooting. He wants to see a scene cut together before he strikes a set or releases an actor.”

Telling the story

The director’s cut is often where the story gets changed from what works on paper to what makes a better film. Baxter elaborated, “When David starts a film, the script has been thoroughly vetted, so typically there isn’t a lot of radical story re-arrangement in the cutting room. As editors, we got a lot of credit for the style of intercutting used in The Social Network, but truthfully that was largely in the script. The dialogue was tight and very integral to the flow, so we really couldn’t deviate a lot. I’ve always found the assembly the toughest part, due to the volume and the pressure of the ticking clock. Trying to stay on pace with the shoot involves some long days. The shooting schedule was 106 days and I had my first cut ready about two weeks after the production wrapped. A director gets around ten weeks for a director’s cut and with some directors, you are almost starting from scratch once the director arrives. With David, most of that ten week period involves adding finesse and polish, because we have done so much of the workload during the shoot.”

He continued, “The first act of Gone Girl uses a lot of flashbacks to tell Amy’s side of the story and with these, we deviated a touch from the script. We dropped a couple of scenes to help speed things along and reduced the back and forth of the two timelines by grouping flashbacks together, so that we didn’t keep interrupting the present day; but, it’s mostly executed as scripted. There was one scene towards the end that I didn’t feel was in the right place. I kept trying to move it, without success. I ended up taking another pass at the cut of the scene. Once we had the emotion right in the cut, the scene felt like it was in the right place, which is where it was written to be.”

“The hardest scenes to cut are the emotional scenes, because David simplifies the shooting. You can’t hide in dynamic motion. More complex scenes are actually easier to cut and certainly quite fun. About an hour into the film is the ‘cool girls’ scene, which rapidly answers lots of question marks that come before it. The scene runs about eight minutes long and is made up of about 200 set-ups. It’s a visual feast that should be hard to put together, but was actually dessert from start to finish, because David thought it through and supplied all the exact pieces to the puzzle.”

Music that builds tension

Composers Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross of Nine Inch Nails fame are another set of Fincher regulars. Reznor and Ross have typically supplied Baxter with an album of preliminary themes scored with key scenes in mind. These are used in the edit and then later enhanced by the composers with the final score at the time of the mix. Baxter explained, “On Gone Girl we received their music a bit later than usual, because they were touring at the time. When it did arrive, though, it was fabulous. Trent and Atticus are very good at nailing the feeling of a film like this. You start with a piece of music that has a vibe of ‘this is a safe, loving neighborhood’ and throughout three minutes it sours to something darker, which really works.”

“The final mix is usually the first time I can relax. We mixed at Skywalker Sound and that was the first chance I really had to enjoy the film, because now I was seeing it with all the right sound design and music added. This allows me to get swallowed up in the story and see beyond my role.”

Visual effects

The key factor to using Premiere Pro CC was its integration with After Effects CC via Adobe’s Dynamic Link feature. Kirk Baxter explained how he uses this feature, “Gone Girl doesn’t seem like a heavy visual effects film, but there are quite a lot of invisible effects. First of all, I tend to do a lot of invisible split screens. In a two-shot, I’ll often use a different performance for each actor. Roughly one-third of the timeline contains such shots. About two-thirds of the timeline has been stabilized or reframed. Normally, this type of in-house effects work is handled by the assistants who are using After Effects. Those shots are replaced in my sequence with an After Effects composition. As they make changes, my timeline is updated.”

“There are other types of visual effects, as well. David will take exteriors and do sky replacements, add flares, signage, trees, snow, breath, etc. The shot of Amy sinking in the water, which has been used in the trailers, is an effects composite. That’s better than trying to do multiple takes with the real actress by drowning her in cold water. Her hair and the water elements were created by Digital Domain. This is also a story about the media frenzy that grows around the mystery, which meant a lot of TV and computer screen comps. That content is as critical in the timing of a scene as the actors who are interacting with it.”

Tyler Nelson added his take on this, “A total of four assistants worked with Kirk on these in-house effects. We were using the same ProRes editing files to create the composites. In order to keep the system performance high, we would render these composites for Kirk’s timeline, instead of using unrendered After Effects composites. Once a shot was finalized, then we would go back to the 6K .r3d files and create the final composite at full resolution. The beauty of doing this all internally is that you have a team of people who really care about the quality of the project as much as everyone else. Plus the entire process becomes that much more interactive. We pushed each other to make everything as good as it could possibly be.”

Optimization and finishing

A custom pipeline was established to make the process efficient. This was spearheaded by post production consultant Jeff Brue, CTO of Open Drives. The front end storage for all active editorial files was a 36TB RAID-protected storage network built with SSDs. A second RAID built with standard HDDs was used for the .r3d camera files and visual effects elements. The hardware included a mix of HP and Apple workstations running with NVIDIA K6000 or K5200 GPU cards. Use of the NVIDIA cards was critical to permit as much real-time performance as possible doing the edit. GPU performance was also a key factor in the de-Bayering of .r3d files, since the team didn’t use any of the RED Rocket accelerator cards in their pipeline. The Macs were primarily used for the offline edit, while the PCs tackled the visual effects and media processing tasks.

In order to keep the Premiere Pro projects manageable, the team broke down the film into eight reels with a separate project file per reel. Each project contained roughly 1,500 to 2,000 files. In addition to Dynamic Linking of After Effects compositions, most of the clips were multi-camera clips, as Fincher typically shoots scenes with two or more cameras for simultaneous coverage. This massive amount of media could have potentially been a huge stumbling block, but Brue worked closely with Adobe to optimize system performance over the life of the project. For example, project load times dropped from about six to eight minutes at the start down to 90 seconds at best towards the end.

The final conform and color grading was handled by Light Iron on their Quantel Pablo Rio system run by colorist Ian Vertovec. The Rio was also configured with NVIDIA Tesla cards to facilitate this 6K pipeline. Nelson explained, “In order to track everything I used a custom Filemaker Pro database as the codebook for the film. This contained all the attributes for each and every shot. By using an EDL in conjunction with the codebook, it was possible to access any shot from the server. Since we were doing a lot of the effects in-house, we essentially ‘pre-conformed’ the reels and then turned those elements over to Light Iron for the final conform. All shots were sent over as 6K DPX frames, which were cropped to 5K during the DI in the Pablo. We also handled the color management of the RED files. Production shot these with the camera color metadata set to RedColor3, RedGamma3 and an exposure index of 800. That’s what we offlined with. These were then switched to RedLogFilm gamma when the DPX files were rendered for Light Iron. If, during the grade, it was decided that one of the raw settings needed to be adjusted for a few shots, then we would change the color settings and re-render a new version for them.” The final mastering was in 4K for theatrical distribution.

As with his previous films, director David Fincher has not only told a great story in Gone Girl, but set new standards in digital post production workflows. Seeking to retain creative control without breaking the bank, Fincher has pushed to handle as many services in-house as possible. His team has made effective use of After Effects for some time now, but the new Creative Cloud tools with Premiere Pro CC as the hub, bring the power of this suite to the forefront. Fortunately, team Fincher has been very eager to work with Adobe on product advances, many of which are evident in the new application versions previewed by Adobe at IBC in Amsterdam. With a film as complex as Gone Girl, it’s clear that Adobe Premiere Pro CC is ready for the big leagues.

Kirk Baxter closed our conversation with these final thoughts about the experience. He said, “It was a joy from start to finish making this film with David. Both he and Cean [Chaffin, producer and David Fincher’s wife] create such a tight knit post production team that you fall into an illusion that you’re making the film for yourselves. It’s almost a sad day when it’s released and belongs to everyone else.”

Video editors are being called on to do more and mixing audio is one of those tasks. While advanced audio editing and mixing is still best done in a DAW and by a professional who uses those tools everyday, it’s long been the case that most local TV commercials and a lot of corporate videos are mixed by the editor within the NLE. Time for a second look at the subject.

Although most modern NLEs have very strong audio tools, I find that Adobe Premiere Pro CC is one of the better NLEs when it comes to basic audio mixing. There is a wide range of built-in plug-ins and it accepts most third party VST and AU (Mac) filters. Audio can be mixed at both the clip and the track level using faders, rubber-banding in the timeline or by writing automation mix passes with the track mixer. The following are some simple tips for getting good mixes for TV using Premiere Pro CC.

Repair – If you have problem audio tracks, don’t forget that you can send your audio clip to Audition. When you select a clip to edit in Audition, a copy of the file is extracted and sent to Audition. This extracted copy replaces the original clip on the Premiere timeline so the original stays untouched. Audition is good for surgery, such as removing background noise. There are both waveform and spectral views where it’s possible to isolate and “heal” noise elements visible in the spectral view. I recently used this to reduce the noise from a lawn mower heard in the background of an on-location interview.

Third-party filters – In addition the built-in tools, Premiere Pro supports any compliant audio filters on your system. By scanning the system, Premiere Pro (as well as Audition) can access plug-ins that you might have installed as part of other applications. Several good filter sets are available from Focusrite, Waves and iZotope. When it comes to audio mixing for simple projects, I’m a fan of the Vocal Rider and One Knob plug-ins from Waves. Vocal Rider is best with voice-overs by automatically “riding” the level between a minimum and maximum setting. It works a bit like a human operator in evening out volume variations and is not as blunt a tool as a compressor. The One Knob filters are a series of comprehensive filters for EQ or reverb controlled by a single adjustment knob. For example, you can use the “brighter” filter to adjust a multi-band, parametric-style EQ that increases the trebleness of the sound.

Mixing formula – This is my standard formula for mixing TV spots in Premiere Pro. My intention is to end up with voices that sit well against a music track without the music volume being too low. A handy Premiere tool is the vocal enhancer. It’s a simple filter with an adjustment dial that balances the setting for male or female voices as well as for music. Dial in the setting by ear to the point that the voice “cuts” through the mix without sounding overly processed. For music, I’ll typically apply an EQ filter to the track and bring down the broader mid-range by -2dB. Across the master bus (or a submix bus for each stem) I’ll apply a dynamic compressor/limiter. This is just used to “soft clip” the bus volume at -10dB. Overall, I’ll adjust clip and track volumes to run under this range, so as not to be harshly compressed or clipped.

CALM – Most audio delivered for US broadcast has to be compliant to the loudness specs of the CALM Act. There are similar European standards. Adobe aids us in this, by including the TC Electronics Radar metering plug-in. If you use this, place it on the master bus and make sure audio is routed first through a submix bus. I’ll place a compressor/limiter on the submix bus. This way, all volume adjustments and limiting happen upstream of the meter. By adjusting your mix with the Radar meter running, it’s possible to end up with a compliant mix that still sounds quite natural.

As someone who does color correction as often within an NLE as in a dedicated grading application, it’s nice to see that Apple and Adobe are not treating their color tools as an afterthought. (No snide Apple Color comments, please.) Both the Final Cut Pro 10.1.2 and Creative Cloud 2014 updates include new tools specifically designed to improve color correction. (Click the images below for an expanded view with additional explanation.)

Apple Final Cut Pro 10.1.2

This FCP X update includes a new, built-in LUT (look-up table) feature designed to correct log-encoded camera files into Rec 709 color space. This type of LUT is camera-specific and FCP X now comes with preset LUTs for ARRI, Sony, Canon and Blackmagic Design cameras. This correction is applied as part of the media file’s color profile and, as such, takes affect before any filters or color correction is applied.

These LUTs can be enabled for master clips in the event, or after a clip has been edited to a sequence (FCP X project). The log processing can be applied to a single clip or a batch of clips in the event browser. Simply highlight one or more clips, open the inspector and choice the “settings” selection. In that pane, access the “log processing” pulldown menu and choose one of the camera options. This will now apply that camera LUT to all selected clips and will stay with a clip when it’s edited to the sequence. Individual clips in the sequence can later be enabled or disabled as needed. This LUT information does not pass though as part of an FCPXML roundtrip, such as sending a sequence to Resolve for color grading.

Although camera LUTs are specific to the color science used for each camera model’s type of log encoding, this doesn’t mean you can’t use a different LUT. Naturally some will be too extreme and not desirable. Some, however, are close and using a different LUT might give you a desirable creative result, somewhat like cross-processing in a film lab.

Adobe CC 2014 – Premiere Pro CC and SpeedGrade CC

In this CC 2014 release, Adobe added master clip effects that travel back and forth between Premiere Pro CC and SpeedGrade CC via Direct Link. Master clip effects are relational, meaning that the color correction is applied to the master clip and, therefore, every instance of this clip that is edited to the sequence will have the same correction applied to it automatically. When you send the Premiere Pro CC sequence to SpeedGrade CC, you’ll see that the 2014 version now has two correction tabs: master clip and clip. If you want to apply a master clip effect, choose that tab and do your grade. If other sections of the same clip appear on the timeline, they have automatically been graded.

Of course, with a lot of run-and-gun footage, iris levels and lighting changes, so one setting might not work for the entire clip. In that case, you can add a second level of grading by tweaking the shot in the clip tab. Effectively you now have two levels of grading. Depending on the show, you can grade in the master clip tab, the clip tab or both. When the sequence goes back to Premiere Pro CC, SpeedGrade CC corrections are applied as Lumetri effects added to each sequence clip. Any master clip effects also “ripple back” to the master clip in the bin. This way, if you cut a new section from an already-graded master clip to that or any other sequence, color correction has already been applied to it.

In the example I created for the image above, the shot was graded as a master clip effect. Then I added more primary correction and a filter effect, by using the clip mode for the first time the clip appears in the sequence. This was used to create a cartoon look for that segment on the timeline. Compare the two versions of these shots – one with only a master clip effect (shots match) and the other with a separate clip effect added to the first (shots are different).

Since master clip effects apply globally to source clips within a project, editors should be careful about changing them or copy-and-pasting them, as you may inadvertently alter another sequence within the same project.

Adobe Anywhere for video is Adobe’s first foray into collaborative editing. Anywhere functions a lot like other shared storage environments, except that editors and producers are not bound to working within the facility and its hard-wired network. The key difference between Adobe Anywhere and other NLE/SAN combinations is that all media is stored at the central location and the system’s servers handle the actual editing and compositing functions of the editing software. This means that no media is stored on the editor’s local computer and lightweight client stations can be used, since the required horsepower exists at the central location. Anywhere works within a facility using the existing LAN or externally over the internet when client systems connect remotely over VPN. Currently Adobe Anywhere is integrated directly into Adobe Premiere Pro CC and Prelude CC (Windows and OS X). Early access to After Effects integration is part of Adobe Anywhere 1.6, with improved integration available in the next release.

The Adobe Anywhere cluster

Adobe Anywhere software is installed on a set of Windows servers, which are general purpose server computers that you would buy from a vendor like Dell or HP. The software creates two types of nodes: a single Adobe Anywhere Collaboration Hub node and three or more Adobe Mercury Streaming Engine nodes. Each node is installed on a separate server, so a minimum configuration requires four computers. This is separate from the shared storage. If you use a SAN, such as a Facilis Technology or an EditShare system, the SAN will be mounted at the OS level by the computing cluster of Anywhere servers. Local and remote editors can upload source media to the SAN for shared access via Anywhere.

The Collaboration Hub computer stores all of the Anywhere project metadata, manages user access and coordinates the other nodes in the system. The Mercury Streaming Engine computers provide real-time, dynamic viewing streams of Premiere Pro and Prelude sequences with GPU-accelerated effects. Media stays in its native file format on the storage servers. There are no proxy files created by the system. In order to handle real-time effects, each of the Streaming Engine servers must be equipped with a high-end NVIDIA graphics card.

As a rule of thumb, this minimum cluster size supports 10-15 active users, according to Adobe. However, the actual number depends on media type, resolution, number of simultaneous source clips needed per editor, as well as activities that may be automated like import and export. Adobe prices the Anywhere software based on the number of named users. This is a subscription model of $1,000/year/user. That’s in addition to installed seats of Creative Cloud and the cost of the hardware to make the system work, which is supplied by other vendors and not Adobe. Since this is not sold as a turnkey installation by Adobe, certain approved vendors, like TekServe and Keycode Media, have been qualified as Adobe Anywhere system integrators.

How it works

While connected to Adobe Anywhere and working with an Anywhere project, the Premiere Pro or Prelude application on the local computer is really just functioning as the software front-end that is driving the application running back at the server. The result of the edit decisions are streamed back to the local machine in real-time as a single stream of video. The live stream of media from the Mercury Streaming Engine is being handled in a similar fashion to the playback resolution throttle that’s already part of Premiere Pro. As native media is played, the computer adjusts the stream’s playback compression based on bandwidth. Whenever playback is paused, the parked frame is updated to full resolution – thus, enabling an editor to tweak an effect or composite and always see the full resolution image while making the adjustments.

To understand this better, let’s use the example of a quad split. If this were done locally, the drives would be playing back four streams of video and the software and GPU of that local computer would composite the quad split and present a single stream of video to the viewer display. In the case of Adobe Anywhere, the playback of these four streams and the compositing of the quad split would take place on the Mercury Streaming Engine computer. In turn, it would stream this live composite as a single feed of video back to the remotely connected computer. Since all the “heavy lifting” is done at “home base” the system requirements for the client machine can be less beefy. In theory, you could be working with a MacBook Air, while editing RED Epic 5K footage.

Productions

Another difference with Adobe Anywhere is that instead of having Premiere Pro or Prelude project files, users create shared productions, designed for multi-user and multi-application access. This way a collaborating team is set up like a workgroup with assigned permission levels. Media is common and central to avoid media duplication. Any media that is added on-site, is uploaded to the production in its native resolution and becomes part of the shared assets of the production. The Collaboration Hub computer manages the database for all productions.

When a user remotely logs into an Adobe Anywhere Production, media to which he has been granted access is available for browsing using Premiere Pro’s standard Media Browser panel. When an editor starts working, Anywhere automatically makes a virtual “clone” of his or her production items and opens them in a private session. Because multiple people can be working in the same production at the same time, Adobe Anywhere provides protection against conflicts or overwrites. In order to share your private changes, you must first get any updates from the shared production. This pulls all shared changes into your private view. If another person has changed the same asset you are working on, you are provided with information about the conflict and given the opportunity to keep the other person’s changes, your changes or both. Once you make your choices, you can then transfer your changes back to the shared production. Anywhere also maintains a version history, so if unwanted changes are made, you can revert back to an earlier or alternate version.

Adobe Anywhere in the wild

Although large installations like CNN are great for publicity headlines, Adobe Anywhere is proving to be useful at smaller facilities, too. G-Men Media is a production company based in Venice, California. They are focused primarily on feature film and commercial broadcast work. According to G-Men COO, Jeff Way, “G-Men was originally founded with the goal of utilizing the latest digital technologies available to reduce costs, accelerate workflow and minimize turnaround time for our clients. Adobe Anywhere allowed us to provide our clients a more efficient workflow on post productions without having to grow infrastructure on a per project basis.”

“A significant factor of Adobe Anywhere, which increased the growth of our client base, was the system’s ability to organize production teams based on talent instead of location. If we can minimize or eliminate time required for coordinating actual production work (i.e. shipping hard drives, scheduling meetings with editors, awaiting review/approval), we can save clients money that they can then invest into more creative aspects of the project – or simply undercut their budget. Furthermore, we have the ability to scale up or down without added expenses in infrastructure. All that’s required on our end is simply granting the Creative Cloud seat access to the system assets for their production.”

The G-Men installation was handled by Keycode Media, based on the recommended Adobe configuration described at the beginning of this article. This includes four SuperMicro 1U rack-mounted SuperServers. Three of these operate as the Adobe Anywhere Mercury Streaming Engines and the fourth acts as the Adobe Anywhere Collaboration Hub. Each of the Mercury Streaming Engines has its own individual NVIDIA Tesla K10 GPU card. The servers are connected to a Facilis Terrablock shared storage array via a 10 Gigabit Ethernet switch. Their Internet feed is via a fiber optic connection, typically operating at 500Mbps (down) /150Mbps (up). G-Men has used the system on every project, since it went live in August of 2013. Noteworthy was its use for post on Savageland – the first feature film to run through an Adobe Anywhere system.

Way continued, “Savageland ended up being a unique situation and the ultimate test of the system’s capabilities. Savageland was filmed over three years with various forms of media from iPhone and GoPro footage to R3D raw and Canon 5D. It was really a matter of what the directors/producers could get their hands on from day-to-day. After ingesting the assets into our system, we were able to see a fluid transition straight into editing without having to transcode media assets. One of the selling factors of gaining Savageland as a client was the flexibility and feasibility of allowing all of the directors and editors (who lived large distances from each other in Los Angeles) to work at their convenience. The workflow for them changed from setting aside their weekends and nights for review meetings at a single location to a readily available review via their MacBooks and iPads.”

“For most of our clients, the system has allowed them to bring on the editorial talent they want without having to worry about the location of the editor. At the same time, the editors enjoyed the flexibility of working from wherever they wanted – many times out of their own homes. The benefit for editors and directors is the capability to remotely collaborate and provide feedback immediately. We’ve had a few productions where there are more than one editor working on the same assets – both creating different versions of the same edit. At the same time we had a director viewing the changes immediately after they were shared, with notes on each version. Then they had the ability to immediately make a decision on one or the other or provide creative feedback, so the editors could immediately apply the changes in real time.”

G-Men is in production on Divine Access, a feature film being shot in Austin, Texas. Way explained, “We’re currently in Austin beginning principal photography. Knowing the cloud-based editing workflows available to us, we wanted to expand the benefits we are gaining in post to the entirety of a feature film production from first location scout to principal photography and all the way through to delivery. We’re using our infrastructure to ingest and begin edits as we shoot, which is really new and exciting to all of the producers working on the film. With the upload speeds we have available to us, we are able to provide review/approvals to our director the same day.”

In a previous post, I discussed how to use Final Cut Pro X Color Board presets. For that post, I created a set of presets and made them available as a free download. That remains one of the most viewed blog posts I’ve written and literally thousands of readers have downloaded the presets. In this post, I’m doing much the same with Adobe SpeedGrade CC Looks.

Adobe SpeedGrade CC uses the Lumetri deep color engine and presets may be shared between Premiere Pro CC and SpeedGrade CC via the Direct Link protocol. Grades, LUTs and presets applied in SpeedGrade are combined into a single Lumetri filter effect that gets applied to the clip in Premiere Pro. When SpeedGrade CC is installed, it includes a number of preset Look examples developed by Adobe and Looks Labs. These include stylized grades, film emulations and camera log conversions among others. When you work in SpeedGrade, it is possible to save user-created Looks, as well. These are a combination of any set of layers and grades that you have applied to a single clip. These may include color correction adjustments, but also LUTs and special visual effects filters. User files are saved as .look files with a corresponding .jpg thumbnail of the shot that the grade was originally applied to. These .look files are saved by SpeedGrade in a number of possible folder locations, so you have to be careful, as to which folder is open and selected when you save a file.

I have created a variety of custom Looks covering color treatments, effects, film styles and more. These Looks were built around an image I’ve used for many of my color correction blog posts, because it has a nice spectrum of colors. For example, it’s hard to set up a characteristic “orange & teal” look, when the image has no blues, greens or skin tones. To start, download the file from the link below and unzip the archive file. Inside, you’ll find a folder called “op_sgrades”. Let me point out that my testing and instructions are based on a Mac. I have not tested this on a Windows PC, so I am not sure where the proper default installation folder lives.

On a Mac, the supplied Looks styles (Lumetri and SpeedLooks) are inside the closed application bundle. To install this new folder, you need to open the SpeedGrade CC package contents (right-click the application icon and choose “show package contents”). This will expose the application’s Contents folder. From there, navigate to the MacOS subfolder and then the Look Examples subfolder. Drag the “op_sgrades” folder into the Look Examples folder. When you next open SpeedGrade CC, you will be able to access this new set of Looks in the Looks Management pane. On a PC, right-click the application program icon and select “open file location”. This will expose a set of files, including the Look Examples folder.

Another caveat to this procedure. What happens with the next Adobe update to SpeedGrade CC? I’m not sure what happens to any folders inside the application contents package during an update. It may be that you would have to install this custom folder into the Look Examples folder again after a SpeedGrade CC version update. We’ll see when the next SpeedGrade CC update happens.

Since each of these presets was built on the same log-encoded (flat) image, you will need to adjust the grade according to the image you apply it to. In all of these, the first Primary layer (bottom of the stack) will be the same and is used to neutralize the image. The sliders I adjusted include input saturation, pivot, contrast, temperature and magenta. Only the global settings were adjusted in this layer. You can tweak it, hide/disable it or replace it with a LUT adjustment instead. I have stayed away from camera LUTs, as a way of neutralizing the image, because these will drastically affect the other corrections in the stack – often in unpredictable ways.

If you look back at my FCP X Color Board Presets article, you may notice that those looks were more extreme. In this set, I stayed more subtle, but the presets will be more complex, since SpeedGrade CC permits built-in effects. Some of these may be slow to display and update. This is especially true of any that include blurs.